Jay Hernandez

Jay Hernandez started on the NBC teen series Hang Time and made his film debut opposite Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful in 2001, still one of the better teen dramas of that period and a part with genuine interior life. Hollywood then spent a decade not knowing what to do with him.

The pattern of his filmography is a good actor doing the heavy lifting in films that have not earned it. Hostel is the clearest case: an exploitation picture with a nasty reputation, and his performance inside it is fully committed, a spring-break idiot dragged through a real transformation. Friday Night Lights and World Trade Center put him in ensembles with no interest in his looks, which suited him. Suicide Squad gave him El Diablo, the one member of the squad with an actual moral crisis, and then cut most of what would have made it land.

Television eventually offered the job that fit. He played Thomas Magnum in the CBS revival of Magnum P.I. from 2018 to 2024, an easy, charming procedural that asked him to be likeable for roughly a hundred hours and to carry the lighter tone without smirking at it. That is not ambitious work and he is very good at it. Elsewhere he has done reliable supporting turns in Lakeview Terrace, Takers, Bad Moms and Bright, plus a warm little voice part in Toy Story 4.